How about an essay contest? Start an essay thread for a topic. That thead stays closed for a few days to give time to write it. Each person writes the essay. The thread opens for a couple of days for posting them. No argument. No rebuttal. Just essays. On say a topic like 'Talk Is Cheap.' Or watever would make a good essay.

How about an essay contest? Start an essay thread for a topic. That thead stays closed for a few days to give time to write it. Each person writes the essay. The thread opens for a couple of days for posting them. No argument. No rebuttal. Just essays. On say a topic like 'Talk Is Cheap.' Or watever would make a good essay.

Anybody wanna play?

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Thats cool! How long whats the word limit? Can we post pictures? How will they be judged? Can we get inventive with the topic can it border on tastefully erotic? And humor are we allowed to make you laugh can it be, damned funny honey?
I say we write the first essay on sunshine and we commemorate it to you for coming up with the idea. This could be fun.

how about an essay contest? Start an essay thread for a topic. That thead stays closed for a few days to give time to write it. Each person writes the essay. The thread opens for a couple of days for posting them. No argument. No rebuttal. Just essays. On say a topic like 'talk is cheap.' or watever would make a good essay.

Anybody wanna play?

Click to expand...

thats cool! How long whats the word limit? Can we post pictures? How will they be judged? Can we get inventive with the topic can it border on tastefully erotic? And humor are we allowed to make you laugh can it be, damned funny honey?
I say we write the first essay on sunshine and we commemorate it to you for coming up with the idea. This could be fun.

How about an essay contest? Start an essay thread for a topic. That thead stays closed for a few days to give time to write it. Each person writes the essay. The thread opens for a couple of days for posting them. No argument. No rebuttal. Just essays. On say a topic like 'Talk Is Cheap.' Or watever would make a good essay.

Here is one I posted on another forum. It really did come out of a dream:

1. One morning around Christmas a year or so ago, I awoke out of a dream, and realized these people had been with me in my dreams.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

How strange that sometimes that Ghost of Christmas Past really does come to us. Last night in a dream, I was Christmas shopping again with my mother in the little river town where I was lived as a young girl in the 50s. The temperature was 30 and a cold biting wind blew off the river making one's every step hard and jarring. All the old street people were there. Maybe they weren't really street people, but they were NOT the mainstream by any stretch.

There was a fat little man who was the street sweeper. The thing that made him unique was that he had lost a leg in the war and had a wooden leg. Not an artificial limb that looked like a real one, but a 'peg leg.' In fact, he was dubbed 'Pegleg Pete.' You could always hear him even if you couldn't see him. You could hear him 'tap taping' along the streets and sidewalks all day as he worked.

Then there was the little old lady who was always dressed very dramatically. She always wore a very large hat like you might see in the "Gibson Girl"
pictures of the late 1800s and early 1900s. She had a china doll like quality with her rosy red cheeks drawn in perfect little circles and lipstick extending beyond the lip line to make a perfect voluptuous little mouth. They called her Carolina Moon. And rumor had it that when she was a young woman she had been a stage actress in New York.

Every few years there was an organ grinder and his little monkey who would come to town. They were not there all the time, or even every year. But would blow through every now and then. It was quite a show to me and quite annoying to my mother who thought they were incredibly silly.

There was the homeless couple. Actually a mother and son. No matter what time of year, they dressed in heavy heavy coats. People used to say that they had thousands of dollars sewn up in their coats. When I was in high school, I learned that the man had been a valedictorian of his high school class, but before he got through college had a mental breakdown and was never able to be functional. So he and his mother who had pinned all her hopes on him wandered the streets in their heavy wool coats.

And there was the cripple who sat alongside his tin cup in the doorway of this store or that playing his guitar and singing. I always remember people putting money in the cup but I never remember seeing any in it. I thought that strange, but his pockets must have been hiding what I could not see.

Where are the colorful characters like this now? Maybe I just don't see them, but now it seems the streets are full of gangs, and perps, and pimps, and hos. I know now that those strange people of my youth were incredible people, surviving incredible odds.

I miss them.

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I wish others would post things they have written. I think there is some talent going to waste amidst all the arguing and bickering.

The patriot act was the consequence by us to have a watchful and vigilant tool to strengthen the security of our nation. Those steps formed the first sets of responses to the larger issue we still face. How to deal with radical religious extremist violence now that its an AMERICAN wound. The continued onslaught of cowardly attacks against us will show the character of this nation; to bring peace through strength.

These days are trying and filled with an inner strife that we face together as one people. Black and white alike know of their struggles and the new challenges they face as Americans since the election of the first black American as President. That may be seen by outsiders as a weakness of values for us. Yet we see it as internal to the workings of a fledgling system whereby men of different races coexist, in a series of trials both civil and political that they have fought for and won against each other to govern this country. That freedom of association is what helps, America Keep rising. From the ashes of slavery and the tragedy of the Twin Towers helping us to overcome our national adversity for the common good of the country.

As fellow citizens we can look to the promise of tomorrow by coming together as a nation when we are threatened with the loss of our freedoms.
The issues facing us in 2012, can unite us and liven not dampen the spirit and will to in the simplest of ways maintain our heritage. Finding commonality among those less able to resist the call of one nation, one people who come together under an idea that gives us a unique identity and keeps America rising.

I don't have a lot of time right now, aside from work I am working on a photography project back to the seventies so I'll post old stuff lost in the bits and bytes of the web.

August 06, 1965

We are driving through Charleston and they are yelling ****** lover and some are cheering or just gawking and mom looks anxious but defiant while the driver risks his life and tries to keep eyes on road and roofs and the truck in front of us is there only in case there is a bomb - daddy called me into his den Luci Baines he always used those words when there was trouble he'd offer advice I was youngest a bit wily he told me things to keep me from trouble for he knew youth thinks of itself - he told how people needed help lots of people so Luci Baines I want you always whomever you meet to ask three people three things that concern them - the train ride across the south mommy said we cannot neglect the south the people they risked everything and along the train some shouted things we betrayed them - daddy says some will lose their livelihood because they voted and mommy said but we can't forget the south even when we feared - daddy took me with him that August day when they signed it and the people in the south shouted - and all across the country as he ran I asked three people three things and he always wanted to know for on that August day he said this will change things for lots of people and in two thousand eight my daddy's....

I think LBJ was one of the great presidents in spite of the screw up in Nam. This was prompted after watching a few minutes of his daughters on cspan on July 4th. How America has changed and yet is still fighting the same imaginary battles.

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